Hard Merchandise Page 32

  "You were lucky," said Neelah. "I had just enough clues—enough little pieces of my memory left—to try and find out what had happened, and try to make my way to someplace where I could find out those answers. I didn't realize that what I was doing would make it possi­ ble for you to stumble across me."

  "How ironic." Kodir's words were edged with sar­ casm. "The things we do to try and save ourselves—they so often put us right in harm's way. As when I offered to make you part of my plans to get rid of Kuat of Kuat; if I had known how stupid and blindly loyal you were, I'd never have done that." She spread her hands apart, palms upward, in a mocking, blase show. "But that's why it's so important to learn from our mistakes. Isn't it? You made your mistakes—and I've made mine. And we've both gotten what we wanted. You wanted the truth about the past, about what happened to you—and now you know. And I wanted the leadership of Kuat

  Drive Yards. Guess what? That's just what I've been given."

  "So you convinced the Rebel Alliance to get rid of Kuat, so you can take over the corporation. Congratula­tions. For however long it lasts."

  "That'll be for quite a while," said Kodir. "It doesn't even matter which side wins the battle out near Endor. Now that I've got control of the corporation, I can deal with the Alliance or the Empire—it makes no difference to me."

  "I can see that." Neelah gave a slow nod. "Maybe if the Empire wins the battle, Palpatine will find that you're just the kind of servant he prefers. Greedy and self-serving, but smart enough to recognize just who's got the upper hand."

  "Don't bother trying to insult me." Kodir's laugh was quick and harsh. "As long as I've gotten what I want, I really don't care about your moral opinions."

  "I'm sure you don't. But that makes me wonder about just one thing." Neelah peered closer at the figure stand­ ing before her, the woman whose bloodline she shared. "If getting what you want is all that matters . . . why were you so tenderhearted about my fate? If all that wor­ ried you was my interfering with your plans, wouldn't it have been more effective—and final—to have simply had me killed, rather than abducted and memory-wiped?"

  "As I said: we need to learn from our mistakes. And that's one I'm not going to repeat again." Kodir reached to the section of her belt that had been concealed by the flowing cape, and pulled out a small but efficient-looking blaster pistol. She raised and pointed it straight at Nee­ lah. "I'm sorry that I don't still have the same sisterly feelings toward you that I once did. There was a time when my foolish sentimentality made me think that I could spare your life. I've gotten over it, though. The Rebel Alliance, on the other hand, has shown a depress­ ing tendency to let mere ethics guide its decisions; that very likely means that after this coming battle at Endor, I

  will be dealing with the Empire rather than the Rebels. Palpatine, though, has a vindictive streak that's just as worrisome. And he doesn't like plotting and scheming that's not his own: if anyone was going to get rid of Kuat of Kuat, the Emperor would have wanted to be the one to do it. So you see"— Kodir raised the blaster a fraction of an inch higher—"there's no way I can afford to let you remain alive, and risk having you tell what you've re­ membered."

  "You're right," said Neelah. She didn't flinch from the weapon poised in her direction. "And you really do seem to have learned from your mistakes. There's just one problem with that."

  A thin smile showed on Kodir's face. "And what would that be?"

  Neelah didn't bother to reply. Instead, she stepped forward toward the blaster; at the same time, she brought one forearm up and smashed it against Kodir's wrist, faster than the other woman could react. The blaster pis­ tol went flying, its high arc broken by the nearest bulk­head. With her other hand, Neelah grabbed the collar of Kodir's flowing cape; with a quick, sharp tug, she pulled her off balance. As Kodir fell forward, Neelah brought her raised knee into the other woman's solar plexus, knocking the air from Kodir's lungs in a pain-filled gasp. Neelah stood back and let Kodir fall, forearms clutched instinctively to her gut; another blow to the back of the head laid her out flat on the room's floor.

  A few seconds later, Kodir managed to twist herself onto her back. She blinked at finding the muzzle of the blaster pistol set right between her eyes.

  "The problem with learning from our mistakes"— Neelah leaned down to keep the weapon aimed point-blank at her sister—"is that sometimes we learn a little too late."

  Face pale with shock and pain, Kodir gazed up at her in disbelief. "You ... didn't used to be able... to do stuff like that..."

  "I've been hanging out with a tough crowd." Keeping

  the blaster muzzle fixed on Kodir's skull, Neelah reached down and grabbed the front of the cape, using it to draw Kodir to her feet. "If you can stay alive long enough, there's a lot you can pick up from somebody like Boba Fett. Especially when you've got nothing to lose."

  Before Kodir could manage a reply, another sound pulsed through the room, so deep and low that Neelah could feel it through the soles of her boots. Both she and Kodir looked up, as though storm clouds could have been seen through the durasteel bulkheads surround­ing them.

  The noise sounded like distant thunder. But she knew it was something else.

  News from a distant world arrived almost simultane­ ously with the shock wave from the explosions.

  Commander Rozhdenst had been personally moni­ toring the link to the Rebel Alliance communications ship near Sullust. When word came at last that the at­ tack on the uncompleted Death Star had turned into a full-scale battle between Rebel and Imperial forces, he closed his eyes for a moment, letting his chin sink down upon his chest. The desire to be there, to be in any fight­ ing craft no matter how antiquated or unwieldy, as long as it was in the thick of the action, rose with tidal force through his heart.

  He heard the door to the officers' quarters open. Opening his eyes, Rozhdenst looked up from where he sat at the comm unit controls and saw Ott Klemp. "It's started," said Rozhdenst simply. He didn't have to ex­plain what he was referring to. "And we're stuck here, in the middle of—"

  His words were cut off by the first explosion shiver­ing through the frame of the mobile base. A dull, low- frequency rumble made the air in the room suddenly tangible upon both the commander's and Klemp's skin. The younger man, muscles visibly tensing, looked up toward the ceiling. "What was that?"

  Before an answer could be ventured, indicator lights burst red across the comm unit panel. The voice of one of the Scavenger Squadron's forward scouts crackled over the speaker. "Commander! Something's going on down at the KDY construction docks—something big!"

  Rozhdenst had already switched on the scanners for the base's viewport array. Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up from the angular masses of equipment be­ low. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks' central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane's framework crum­pled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several meters thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys.

  The noise from the explosions couldn't pass through the surrounding vacuum to the Scavenger Squadron's mobile base above, but the shock wave and expelled metal debris were enough to conduct the rumbling and clattering sounds from the hull to the interior a few seconds after the bursts of glaring light on the display screens. As Klemp put out an all-craft command to pull back from the inferno erupting beneath them, the com­ mander punched in the highest levels of surveillance magnification from the scanners.

  "It's not the ships—" Rozhdenst laid a broad fingertip on the closest display screen. "The fleet isn't what's going up." The elongated ships of the cruisers and Destroyers could be seen through the smoke, harshly lit by flames and the hard-shadowed light of another series of explo­ sions.
"It's the docks and all of the major shipbuilding equipment." As both he and Klemp watched, a durasteel-jawed magna-hoist lurched forward like a dying saurian, its blind head bursting through a wall of fire and plowing into a rack of structural girders. "The whole facility's been

  stuffed with high-thermal explosives, from the looks of it."

  "Yeah, but ..." Klemp shook his head. "That whole fleet is going to be scrap as well by the time it's all over." Another impact shook the mobile base. "You think Kuat of Kuat did this? What's he after—sabotage or suicide?"

  "Who cares—"Rozhdenst reached for the comm unit mike. "We've got to get those ships out of there."

  "Sir, that's impossible. There's nobody aboard any of those ships. Who's going to bring them out of the docks?"

  Rozhdenst glanced over his shoulder. "Who do you think? Our guys can do it."

  "That's crazy. I mean... it just is, sir." Klemp pointed to the image of the flames billowing up on the display screen. "You want our squadron to fly into that} The condition that most of our Y-wings are in, they can just barely avoid getting hit—and you want them to go into that kind of a mess? They'll get torn to pieces!"

  "If they're in such rotten shape, then it won't be much of a loss, will it?" Rozhdenst locked his gaze with that of the younger man. "Look, if you or any of the other mem­ bers of the squadron don't want this job, then fine— you can stay out here at the base and watch. But I'm going in."

  Klemp was silent for only a fraction of a second. "And I'll be right behind you, sir. Along with everybody else."

  "Good." Rozhdenst gave a single, quick nod, then handed the microphone to Klemp. "There's no time for plotting a formation attack; this show is going to be over in minutes. Give the squadron full operational initiative— everyone's on their own for vector, approach, and target. Total scramble, eye and comm unit contact to avoid tak­ ing each other out." The Scavenger Squadron com­ mander stood up from the controls. "Let's get going."

  "They must have seen us coming," said Dengar. "So they decided to blow the whole place up."

  The explosions had filled the forward viewports as soon as the Hound's Tooth dropped out of hyperspace. Both Dengar and Boba Fett, in the ship's cockpit, could see the fiery cataclysm taking place in the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks.

  "Don't be stupid," snapped Fett. He pointed to the display screen. The tiny dark shapes of Y-wing craft could be seen silhouetted by the roiling masses of flame. "Those Alliance fighters are obviously going in to try and pull out what they can of the ships moored there. The docks are being blown up from within; there's only one person who could have arranged it, and that's Kuat of Kuat."

  "He's blowing up his own facility?" Dengar frowned in puzzlement. "Why would he do that?"

  "Because he'd rather destroy it," said Fett, "than let it fall into anyone else's hands. I've dealt with him before; Kuat Drive Yards is all that matters for him. Something must have happened—probably with the Rebel Alliance and that fabricated evidence his head of security took from us—that would end his control over the corpora­ tion. So he's taking the whole thing with him."

  "You mean . . . he's in there? You don't think he escaped?"

  Boba Fett shook his head. "There's no place for Kuat of Kuat to escape to. Or at least no place that has Kuat Drive Yards in it. Survival doesn't mean the same thing for him that it does for you and me; for Kuat, it's just death without peace."

  "This is the end of the road, then." Dengar stood back from the pilot's chair and folded his arms across his chest. "You're not going to get any answers out of him now."

  "Don't bet on it." Boba Fett reached for the naviga­ tional controls.

  A sharp current of alarm raced up Dengar's spine. "What're you doing?"

  "I'm going in. To find Kuat."

  "You're crazy—" The main thruster engines had al­ ready kicked in. As Dengar watched in mounting horror, the explosions bursting up from the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks swelled in the forward viewport. The black shapes of collapsing cranes and heat-warped gird­ers became visible. "You'll get us killed!"

  "Maybe," said Fett. "But I'm willing to take the chance."

  "Yeah, well, you might be willing, but I'm not." Standing behind Boba Fett, Dengar clutched the back of the pilot's chair to keep the Hound's surging acceleration from throwing him off his feet. "I can live without every question in the galaxy being answered."

  "I don't care about every question. Just the ones that deal with me."

  The shock wave from another explosion, larger than the ones before it, buffeted the Hound's Tooth. In the forward viewport, a gaping hole could be seen in the cen­ ter of the KDY construction docks large enough to fly a ship through and ringed with twisted, smoldering metal.

  Dengar, with sudden desperation, tried to reach past Boba Fett and grab the controls. "We're supposed to be partners—" His fist locked on to one of the main thruster engine throttles. "And I say we don't get our­ selves killed—"

  With a quick swing of his forearm, Boba Fett knocked Dengar back against the cockpit's rear bulkhead. "You're outvoted on this one," said Fett.

  Slumping down to the floor and squeezing his eyes shut, Dengar could still see the bright glaring light of the explosions, as though they were about to shatter the viewport and annihilate everything in the cockpit. Alarm signals shrieked from the control panel as the Hound's Tooth bucked and spiraled through an engulfing bloom of shrapnel-filled flame.

  Not a good idea, thought Dengar as he ground his teeth together and scrabbled for any hold he could find. The worst one yet—

  The commander of the Scavenger Squadron had been within a few meters of Ott Klemp's wingtip, matching velocity with him all the way to the inferno consuming the KDY construction docks. But he'd had to bank hard to one side to avoid another fireball and whirling tangle of girders and cables; by the time Klemp pulled back on course, any visual contact with the rest of the squadron was cut off by roiling masses of smoke and flame.

  A gap appeared in front of the Y-wing through which Klemp could just make out a moored Lancer-class frigate. As with the other newly constructed ships in the docks, a tug module was magnetically clamped to the bridge. The tugs were not much bigger than the fighter craft swarming through the explosions and white-hot shrapnel; they had no thruster engines of their own, but were designed to be wired through the cruisers' and De­stroyers' data-cable ports, using the larger craft's engines to maneuver out of the docks and into open space. At the moment, the tugs were still enclosed in the balloonlike atmospheric-maintenance shrouds in which the Kuat Drive Yards had worked while routing the control lines. The durasteel-laced shrouds had a programmed viscous layer between the inner and outer membranes, with near-instantaneous resealing capabilities to prevent fatal air-loss during routine industrial accidents. Without those shrouds, Klemp knew, there would be no chance of the Scavenger Squadron's pilots pulling any of the fleet out of the cataclysm engulfing the construction docks.

  He could see the bridge of the frigate now, with the shroud's bubble on the section of hull immediately be­hind. The sequenced explosions hadn't reached the ship yet, though its flanks were tinged with the churning red and orange of the approaching flames. Klemp rolled the Y-wing into a diving arc, straight toward the shroud.

  The Y-wing's prow ripped through the shroud's fab­ ric; Klemp could hear the sharp ping of the durasteel

  threads snapping against the leading edges of the wings. At the same time, he was blinded by the thick semiliquid smearing across the cockpit's canopy. That wouldn't be enough to slow the Y-wing down; within a fraction of a second of penetrating the shroud, he slammed on the craft's braking rockets, their maximum force nearly enough to cut the pilot seat's restraining straps through his chest, and snapping his head forward hard enough to momentarily dizzy him.

  A tangle of broken durasteel threads, embedded in the shroud's viscous resealing layer, pulled away from the Y-wing's hull as Klemp popped the canopy. There wasn't time to check if ther
e was any atmospheric pressure left in the construction shroud; he gulped in the thin oxygen and looked back along the inner curve of the bubble be­hind the Y-wing. The fighter's rear section was mired in the rapidly setting substance, with fluttering tatters of the white fabric sucked into the dwindling gaps. Klemp didn't wait to see if the new seal would hold, but instead ran along the frigate's upper hull toward the tug module.

  Within seconds, he was inside the tug and slamming the exterior hatch shut behind him. The controls on the panel before him were the minimum necessary for lifting the frigate out of the dock in which it had been built; even before Klemp hit the tug module's pilot's chair, he had engaged the controls running to the cruiser's aux­ iliary thruster engines. There was a response lag of nearly a second before the ship responded; with a slow surge of power, its enormous mass began ponderously rising from the dock. The power cables and mooring conduits that were still connected to the hull's various ports now taut­ened and snapped free when they had stretched to their limits.